The development of DK: King of Swing began in the summer of 2003, with the development team at Paon exploring ideas for new control concepts. While experimenting with the Game Boy Advance's L and R buttons, they came up with the idea that pressing the L button will let the character grab with the left hand, and pressing the R button will do the same but with the right hand. The team was also influenced by free climbing becoming a popular sport around that time.

It was Toshiharu Izuno of Nintendo that proposed the team to utilize the Donkey Kong character license for the game. At first, it was originally planned to use original characters, but the decision to use the Donkey Kong IP was done to give the project more global appeal.